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Giancarlo
History Giancarlo arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam via ship from Spain. He came with a great deal of money and his nephew Benedetto, and shortly their room in a local inn was invaded by a large man named Loreto. Giancarlo, then, was punched very hard, and placed in a box. Since awakening, Giancarlo has fallen in with a coterie. This coterie has managed to blunder its way through several large fires, werewolf attacks, murder mysteries and an accidental coup of the Kindred community in Nieuw Amsterdam. This entire time, Giancarlo has had no idea what to do and is mostly winging it. Life Prior to Campaign Giancarlo di Donatello degli Sangiovanni was born in the Sangiovanni family villa in Venice, to Donatello and Rigarda Sangiovanni sometime in the early 1400s and raised as his father's principal heir. The Sangiovanni family's queer necromantic roots were beginning to take hold at this time, and soon a number of the family's elder magi had managed to transform themselves into vampires. Gianni, like everyone of import in the family, was ghouled and held close as he studied his dark arts. Giancarlo made a study of medicine to further his understanding of death. Very gifted in both pursuits, the family paid close attention to his development until it was decided the best education in medicine could be found, at the time, in the Republic of Florence. Thus, Giancarlo migrated and stayed in Florence for some time, studying with the young Lorenzo di'Medici and, later, the young Niccolo Machiavelli. Given his long stay in Florence, and his long lifetime, Giancarlo did his best to maintain a low profile despite his talent for medicine. The influence of both idealists upon Giancarlo was unmistakable; upon his return to Venice in 1502, his approach regarding medicine and healing as first priorities, before considering necromancy, was met with heavy resistance. "Why," his siblings, cousins, and the family's patrons would ask, "do we care if they live?" Gianni had no answers for this at first, though in time answers would come: "We are not in his inheritance," "Dead men no longer hold the Doge's ear," "Without his condottiere, the Ottomans will surely take Venezia." Still, feelings of alienation and disquiet at the family's practices lingered in Giancarlo, and in 1571 - shortly before the Republic lost the island of Cyprus to the Ottoman Empire - he elected to return to the city of Florence, "in the interests of the family business." In Florence, he met a woman - an educated woman, studying literature and the classics - Giulia Orsini, obviously of money and breeding. Being, just as he was, curiously liberated from family in the interest of intellectual pursuits, they developed a kinship. They married without the consent of either family. When it became clear that the transition of the republic he once knew to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany meant money would largely be in the hands of the Medicis, the couple began to travel. For a few months, they stayed with Giulia's family in Apulia, and eventually, she convinced him to take her to meet his own family. The pair arrived at the family villa in 1605, amidst a city wracked by a terrible flood. The chaos meant the 'family business' boomed more than ever, performing construction and cleanup with a veritable army of the walking dead in the wee hours of the night while the city paid for the efforts of its own dead citizens. In light of their success - and Giancarlo's relative failure in Tuscany - his surprise marriage was met with an alarming amount of venom. Giancarlo's mother, Rigarda, had a bride selected for him (his cousin, Madelena) and could not be more furious at this pompous southernor her son had returned with. So, Rigarda Sangiovanni roused a posse and lynched the couple. Giancarlo was not aware of the attack, as he was smothered in his sleep (to ensure the body was entirely intact). He heard Giulia's screams as she was stabbed repeatedly, however, and muffled voices that sounded familiar to him. Two weeks later, Giancarlo was sired by his miserable mother and an unlife of bitterness and anger began. He played the good neonate, committing himself fully to understanding the nature of his new condition and greatly pleasing his sire. Comments were frequently made of the wisdom of siring him despite the unfortunate circumstances of his demise, but quiet words were spoken between parties responsible for the attack. Giancarlo, so often writing in his journals, began a List and began to plan. In 1656, he fled Venice rather suddenly when his mother and several other relatives were burned to ash as they slept. Personality & Style Giancarlo seems impatient, frequently toying with his beard, tapping at things with his cane, or pacing. This gives way to anger fairly easily, it seems, given how readily he pulled at the anima of both Dante and Sandre. His diction is clipped and very specific, almost as though he is narrating a medical procedure to a class he is teaching. While analytical, Giancarlo is somewhat quick to propose potential solutions to whatever he is considering. His difficulty with Dutch may have this seem as though he believes it to be the case; really, he is just thinking out loud. Giancarlo has a strong sense of what is right. Whether that sense aligns with the rest of the coterie has been an issue of brief debate, particularly with Viggo. Gianni dresses quite well, in current European fashions; a men's overcoat with overwhelming brocade and embroidery over a tailored surcote, blouse, and breeches, with a sash and cummerbund, stockings, and broad hat. When he arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam, he wore high wood-heeled shoes typical of French nobility, but has since exchanged them for more serviceable knee-high riding boots. His hair is long and straight, most frequently worn loose, and his facial hair is trimmed into a tidy moustache and pointed goatee. Curiously, Gianni's hair seems to work any tangles or knots from the night's efforts out of itself during the day. Miscellaneous Giancarlo is never seen without his Corinthian leather book-purse containing several books of his, including a few suede-bound journals. He also carries at least one wheel-lock pistol and several flintlocks concealed about his waist, his silvered ebony cane, and a white porcelain goggled bird mask in the manner of the doctors from his homeland. Despite how much he claims to be unlike the rest of his family, he has animated three extremely powerful cadaverous servitors since arriving in Nieuw Amsterdam. He's hesitantly made mention that, given an ample supply of blood, he could animate an army of corpses - a fool's errand, to be sure, but not an insignificant fact. Gianni is a practiced shot with a pistol, and is capable of nimbly swapping between his pistols in an instant. He has also devised a system of paper-wrapping his shot and powder, to hasten the practice of reloading his armaments. Reasonable Assumptions *...He doesn't like his nephew very much because he's a necrophiliac, so Giancarlo doesn't approve of necrophilia. *...He's not accostomed to manual labor, because he's dressed in fancy clothing. *...He's well read in medical literature of the time. *...He was once married and is now a widower, he's mentioned at some point something about his wife's ashes. *...He has no shadow or reflection. This is made obvious when you look at his shadow or reflection, because they aren't there. *...He is a necromancer, like everyone else in his God-forsaken family. Category:Kindred Category:Player Characters Category:Mekhet Category:Sangiovanni Category:Acceptably Rich Category:1650s Category:Magic-User Category:Italian